Five Habits of Highly Successful Drafters

This is the last weekend before the start of the NFL regular season, so there’s a good chance you have a draft in the next few days. I make sure to do these five things going into a draft to make sure I come away with an optimal team.

Practice. Mock drafts are a good start. Mocks with people that aren’t morons is better. Use reddit’s r/fantasyfootball or get on Howard Bender’s (@rotobuzzguy) #MockDraftArmy list. Better still are best ball leagues. You’ve possibly seen the #MFL10 hashtag this summer. They’re gaining popularity through the work of sites like myfantasyleague.com and playdraft.com. You draft a team and your best players are automatically started. No transactions or lineup decision. There’s price points for everyone, but $10 is the standard.

Go to bathroom. Draft’s are long and require focus. You can step out on a snake draft, but you might miss one of your targets being taken. Auctions are very hard to step away from. Get empty so you can minimize the interruptions.

Have a drink on hand. This is starting to sound like a kindergarten check list. It’s easy to forget, though, and some hosts are better than others when it comes to hospitality. You want to be as comfortable as possible during a draft. Bringing a large drink so you don’t realize in the seventh round your mouth feels like sand is a plus. Conversely, manage your buzz to peak as the draft ends if you’re drinking beers.

Circle three players. You aren’t going to get every target but I want to have three guys I feel like I have to leave the draft with. These aren’t players to get cute with and wait for value. They’re going to make your season so land them. I say three because many of us, myself included, tend to go overboard highlighting guys in the rankings that are values/sleepers/etc. Pick just three to circle and do your damnedest to own them.

Know the room. If you’re in a league with strangers this isn’t really possible, but chances are you know your leaguemates well. You’ve drafted with them numerous seasons so think about tendencies you’ve noticed before. Are you picking near a wildcard or a rankings slave? Are they a fan of a certain team? Do they tend to not wait on QB or TE? You can even go back and look for this stuff in past drafts on most platforms. In my home league draft this weekend I avoided disaster by knowing the guy on the turn near me is a Steelers fan who likes to get his backup QB early. I was waiting on QB and eyeing Ben Roethlisberger to pair with my first pick, Antonio Brown. If I had left him exposed he wouldn’t have come out of the turn. I got Big Ben, he took Dak.